


Vivid

by ghostlyhamburger



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-17 21:09:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16981845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostlyhamburger/pseuds/ghostlyhamburger
Summary: Adrien was born without the ability to see colors--until he met the most amazing girl.it's a soulmate au y'all





	Vivid

Adrien was born without a soulmark.

This wasn’t unheard of, but it wasn’t common, either. It meant one of two things: his soulmate was linked to him in some other way, or he didn’t have one. It was possible that he would never know which was the truth.

Still, he was a bright and well-behaved child, and everyone assumed he would live a happy and normal life despite the lack of a mark. Unfortunately, when he began private preschool tutoring, his family quickly learned he wasn’t quite normal.

Poor little Adrien was in tears as the adults discussed why he couldn’t tell red from blue or green from purple. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t understand something so apparently basic that the grownups couldn’t even explain why they were different!

Rigorous tests followed, and it was clear: Adrien was completely colorblind. His vision was only shades of gray.

His parents kept him inside after that, homeschooling him all through his childhood. He needed special care—no one thought about how much the world was color-coded until they tried looking through Adrien’s eyes. An entire curriculum was developed around teaching him how to navigate the world when he couldn’t distinguish essential components of it.

By the time Adrien became a teenager, his life was cold and lonely. His mother had vanished, and he was starting to realize how isolated homeschooling really was. He begged and pleaded with his father to be allowed to attend a real school.

It seemed like a miracle that Adrien was allowed to go. A bigger miracle is what happened on his second day of classes.

He handed his umbrella to his classmate Marinette. When she took it, their fingers brushed for just a second, and for that second, he saw that her eyes were blue.

Of course, he didn’t know how to describe that. He just knew her eyes were a shade that he’d never seen before.

He also noticed that if he squinted, he could tell the difference between things everyone said were different colors. He couldn’t tell you if a sign was blue or green or red, but he could tell you that the yield and turn signs were different in ways besides their shapes.

Everything was still gray and muted, though. He adjusted to the new way he had of seeing things, as he also adjusted to becoming a superhero. Colors meant nothing when he could leap over buildings and had sharper reflexes for sudden life or death battles.

He didn’t tell anyone that he could see colors now.

A few weeks later, he’d fallen in love. He knew it was pointless—almost everyone besides him had a soulmate mark, and relationships outside of soulmarks were rare.

He couldn’t help it, though. Ladybug, his partner, was amazing. She was brave, strong, smart, and beautiful. She didn’t have a visible soulmark, so he could imagine that her skin was blank like his.

Unfortunately, he rarely saw her outside of akuma attacks. Was it wrong that he was occasionally grateful for an akuma just so he could be near her?

After too much unsuccessful flirting, Adrien finally saw Ladybug blush at one of his jokes. He’d count it as a win if he was Chat Noir at the time—but the akuma had come after  _ Adrien _ , so he was stuck until he could get away from the well-meaning heroine.

“Thanks for the save,” he told her as she swung away from the akuma, carrying him close. He tried to stay calm at how close they were. Did she always have those small freckles on her face? “I’d be a pancake without you.”

She laughed, and then suddenly shifted to avoid a flying piece of rubble. Her weight crashed against Adrien, and the tip of her nose brushed his cheek.

When she pulled back, he was suddenly struck by the bright red of her mask against the brilliant blue of her eyes. He finally had names for the colors, and red and blue became his favorites in that moment.

He finally managed to get away from Ladybug long enough to transform. He could barely concentrate on the fight, though, as he was distracted by the colors around him.

No one had told him that there were light and dark shades of each hue!

Ladybug seemed a bit off during the fight as well, but they managed to win fairly easily. The akuma was purified, and Chat Noir raced back to where Ladybug had left Adrien, in case she came to look for him.

She did stop by, just long enough to ask him if he was okay. He couldn’t stop staring at her eyes. They were a different kind of blue from the sky, like the pink on her cheeks was different from the red on her suit.

“Plagg, does Ladybug have a soulmark?” he asked his kwami late at night.

“I don’t know, kid,” the catlike creature replied. “Usually the cat and the ladybug are soulmates, but not always. Since you don’t have a soulmark, it’s almost impossible to know.”

Adrien sighed. As days passed, he focused on school in the lull between akumas, and admired the new colors he could see in the world.

A week later, his class was assigned a new group project. They were to research the history of soulmarks in different cultures, and present their findings to the class.

Alya and Nino paired up immediately, and pulled their friends into their research group. So, Adrien found himself working with Marinette. As the group was in the library, talking about how to divide up the work, an offhand comment from Alya changed his focus.

“Marinette, can you hand me my pencil? It’s the yellow one.”

Marinette reached towards two pencils on the table, and hesitated, prompting Alya to add, “Oh, sorry. It’s the one closer to you.”

As Marinette grabbed the pencil, she seemed to notice Adrien looking at her. She turned and gave an embarrassed smile. “I’m colorblind. It’s easy to forget sometimes, that’s all.”

That explained a lot, suddenly. Even when Adrien had started to see colors, he had noticed that Marinette almost exclusively wore black and white clothing. It was all designed well and looked great, but there hadn’t been more than a rare small splash of color.

He smiled and replied, “That’s all right, I’m colorblind too.”

It was nice to know he wasn’t totally alone. He hoped Marinette’s vision would include color soon. She saw so much beauty in the world all the time, so she’d appreciate the beauty of brilliant blues and reds. In fact, he’d recently discovered purple, and the vivid hue basically blew his mind, so how would Marinette see it?

Later that night, as he did more research for the project, he happened upon an interesting passage in an article.

“Individuals without a soulmark may still have a soulmate. Many report that upon skin to skin contact with their soulmate for the first time, they have a feeling of the world being ‘righted’. This can cause the deaf to hear, or the blind to see. Scientists believe that these disabilities were never truly disabilities, but instead internal soulmarks interfering with the body’s ability to operate. Finding the soulmate is a clear solution.”

Adrien had always been told that his lack of a soulmark meant he didn’t have a soulmate. The puzzle pieces began to fall into place.

Marinette was also colorblind.

Marinette didn’t have a visible soulmark.

He started seeing color after their hands touched that first day.

_ Marinette was his soulmate. _

It was a shame she wasn’t Ladybug, but that didn’t matter. For the first time, he felt a little less alone in the world. Someone was meant for him. He wasn’t just defective.

It was late at night, but he transformed anyways and raced towards Marinette’s house. He had to know if she was his soulmate. He had to know how she felt.

Luckily, she was awake as well. She was sitting on her balcony, staring up at the night sky with a cup of hot chocolate in her hands. She seemed confused when Chat Noir landed quietly in front of her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Is Paris in danger?”

“No,” he replied, shaking his head. “This is going to sound crazy, but I think you’re my soulmate.”

She laughed. “I don’t even have a soulmark.”

“But you’re colorblind,” he said. “I’m colorblind too.”

“How did you know that?”

“I, uh,” he tried to think of something to say. “I know you when I’m not Chat Noir.” Well, the truth never hurt anyone. And if she was his soulmate, she’d have to know sooner or later anyways.

“I don’t have a soulmate,” she said, her voice suddenly sharp. “Please leave me alone.”

He frowned. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to bother you, but I think we really might be soulmates. Here, apparently if we touch then we’ll know?”

He held out his hand to her. She hesitated, but gently placed her hand in his and didn’t protest as he pressed his lips gently to the back of her knuckles.

When he glanced up at her, he saw her eyes were wide, startled.

“Your eyes are green,” she said in a soft voice.

“Yours are blue,” he replied, unable to stop the giddy grin from spreading across his face.

She smiled just slightly, but then said, “This…this is a lot to deal with. I don’t know what to do…”

“I’ll go now,” Chat offered. “I’ll see you in class tomorrow, anyways.”

“In class?” She seemed puzzled for a moment, and squinted at him. “Adrien?”

His grin grew wider. “Until tomorrow, princess.”

To his great disappointment, Marinette didn’t show up at school the next day. He asked Alya about it, who said she was sick from apparently staying up all night.

Adrien wasn’t sure if he felt guilty or glad about that. At least he was on her mind. But why did that keep her up all night? Was she upset?

He was distracted in class as he tried to untangle his thoughts and feelings. Of course he cared that Marinette was okay. He was her soulmate! But…maybe he had rushed it all a little bit.

If the situation had been reversed, if Marinette had come up to Adrien out of the blue and said they were soulmates, he probably wouldn’t be quite as giddy. He  _ might _ have been a little overzealous.

On top of that, he still loved Ladybug. That wasn’t going away just because he realized he had a soulmate.

So where did that leave Marinette? Were they supposed to date now? What if she was in love with someone else too?

He’d definitely rushed in too fast without thinking. And he even told her he was Chat Noir! Ladybug was absolutely going to chew him out over that one, if she didn’t kill him first.

An akuma attacked at lunch, so he had to see Ladybug before he figured out what to tell her. He knew there was no way he could just keep it secret from her—if they weren’t soulmates, then they were at least partners.

He thought about it while trying to fight, and it threw off his game. He got hit a few more times than normal when he didn’t notice the akuma’s incoming blows. They still managed to defeat it, with Ladybug doing more of the work.

Once Ladybug had purified and released the akuma, she grabbed a distracted Chat Noir by the tail and pulled him away from public view. “What is  _ wrong _ with you?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just—I think I found out who my soulmate is and I probably ruined things with her.”

Ladybug’s expression softened. “Why do you think that?”

“I kind of showed up at her house, told her we were soulmates, told her who I really am, and then left,” Chat admitted. “I wasn’t thinking straight. I was just so glad to have a soulmate I didn’t think it through at all.”

Her expression changed again, almost like she was trying to hide a smile. “Why don’t you tell me about her, Chaton?”

He grinned. “Her name’s Marinette, and she’s amazing. She’s smart, she’s brave, she’s pretty, and everyone likes her. If I’d gotten to know her before meeting you, I’d probably be in love with her. She’s a fantastic fashion designer. I was colorblind before meeting her, and I could tell she was great without seeing any colors, and then I found out she designs  _ without _ color and she’s just so amazing. She’s met Jagged Stone, she bakes the best macarons, and she’s probably the most popular girl in class. I didn’t even think I  _ had _ a soulmate, so I’m lucky it’s her.”

When he glanced back at Ladybug, she was smiling. In a soft voice, she said, “I’ve been colorblind for years. Until I met a guy in my class who gave me an umbrella on a rainy day. I got home and I saw the colors of my bedroom walls were pink. I thought he must have been my soulmate, but he didn’t say anything to me. Until last night.”

She turned towards him and he couldn’t help but to grin even wider. He knew he looked ridiculous, but he felt like he was on top of the world.

“You are my soulmate,” he said. “I should have figured it out. Of course it’s you. No one else is as amazing as you are.”

Ladybug’s earrings beeped. Instead of running away like usual, she stepped closer to Chat Noir. “I wouldn’t be sure about that. You’re also pretty amazing.”

She moved closer, as did he, and as their Miraculouses beeped their final warnings, their lips met. When they parted, the world was finally full of vivid color.


End file.
